Nancy Love’s Weblog

It is interesting how we focus on the rule and not the exception.  Often it is the exception that will teach us the most.  That is what Appreciative Inquiry is about for me.  It is a search for the exceptions to the overwehlming focus on teh negative.  When you ask “Where is this solved?” you get new information and new approaches.  I have been asking myself this week…”When is life NOT a chore?”  “When I am happy and worry free?”  Myself and I are talking about focusing our attention on the positive in our life and creating more of that.  …. I think it is working!!!!

One exception for me is when I read old blogs and think … “that is something I would enjoy reading if I were someone else.”  That encourages me to keep going, to write and write until something profound finds its way on to the page.  I like to write and to share my thoughts on the screen or in my journal.  For me it is a comfortable way to process and move from the past to the future with deliberate intent to do my best.

I am reminded of the Four Agreements (RUIZ) , some of which I will reframe here.  Always do your best: I think doing your best is all you can ever expect of yourself.  As long as you have been conscious and deliberate in your attempts to arrive at what ever destination or dream you are chasing then you can look yourself in the mirror and smile.

Be impeccable with your word – To me that means “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”  It is the beuatiful combination and balance of the Gentle and HOnest pieces int eh GHOST protocol.  If you are only gentle and not honest you are not impeccable.  If you are honest and not genlte you are not impeccable.  Be impeccable with your word.

Check Assumptions – If you have a “leemer” – which is the name for he nagging instinct that tells you that something is not right before you know that somethings not right – if you have a “leemer” then check it out.  Ask!

Get Curious – It is not about you – that is my version of what Ruiz identifies as “Don’t take anything personally”.  In my quest for postiive reframes I have some to understand the intention of that Agreement is to be emotionally mature – to detach with out disengaging.

The rule is be good to yourself and treat others the way they would like to be treated.  It is often referred to as the platinum rule.  We have accepted it as one of the PULSE Rules.  The four agreements are also congruent with PULSE thinking, doing and feeling.  They provide another foundation for this appreciative work.  Look for what works and do more of that……  that’s the rule.

I have been thinking about blogs and writing and how important it is to me and to many people who release, relax and relate to their world through writing.  It is the creative  “in the zone” feeling you get when things are going well that brings you back to the writing.  It is the hard work of organizing thoughts and topics, arguments and ideas into coherent strings of meaning that keeps you away.  Sometime it just seems like too much work to organizae thoughts in a way that would mean something to someone else.  Better just to keep them to yourself.

Maybe … maybe not. Sometimes keeping things to yourself menas that no one understands your thoughts, not even you.  Taking the time to be with and separate your ideas into words and sentences, organizes then in a way that is helpful for others and is essential for you.  How else would you begin to build confidence and trust in yourself as a thinker, a knower, a doer, a feeler … as a human.

Words create worlds.  By giving words and voice to your thoughts you build understanding and you build the frame for the future.  How do you describe what has happened to you in the past?  How do you understand what is happening now?  How do you predict the future?  Your stance or perch will determine your choice of vocabulary with which you build your world.  Positive stance = positive words = positive world.

It seems like a simply formula. “Control your thoughts” is an old Chinese proverb which goes on to say “thoughts become ideas, ideas become words, words become actions, actions become habits and habits are hard to break so control your thoughts”.  It seems a little counterintuitive to encourage creativity through control.  Any artist will tell you about the need for discipline in order to achieve greatness.  So create with control.  All things in balance.  Control your thoughts.

Remember when you first saw that 1970’s poster?  It had a profound effect on me.  I was youngish and hadn’t quite come to the realization that I was in fact vincible, that life would at some point end.  I had limited time and I should use it wisely.  That’s what I learned from the poster.  Each day since has meant a lot to me.  Sometimes I feel guilty when I have a day when I don’t contribute in some way to others and the world.

This week I was working with a great group of people.  It was an advanced program so everyone was familiar with me and PULSE.  It was so much fun just to play with the concepts and watch as the light bulbs lite.  It is satisfying to me to think that people go away from the courses we teach with a new appreciation for appreciation and that they spread that into their own worlds.

This week I have also been distracted by a number of issues that seem to weigh alot.  It always demonstrates the need for balance when you can contrast what uplifts you and makes you feel better with what weighs on your mind.  For me both are always about helping people.  If I can’t help, or if helping others provides such a burden to me that I can’t sustain my own balance, I become confused and reflective, pensive and withdrawn and I truly don’t know what to do.

When I know what should happen and have no power to wield my “should ” wand to make everyone see things my way, I get moody and defensive, and begin to wonder why everyone doesn’t know what I am thinking.  I am screaming in my head so they MUST be able to hear it.  And yet I can’t find the gentle, honest, open, specific talk, the words that I need to MAKE them understand the errors of their ways.  Sound familiar????

When what I do helps others I feel good.  I feel as if this day, the first day of the rest of my life, has value and adds meaning to life, the universe and everything. “Say what you need to say” and move on.  Change the world through conversations and appreciate the value in the difficult conversations.  Mutually agreeable, balanced outcome.  Give and take in balance is the key.

In my Ripley’s Believe it or Not Journal this morning was a tidbit of information about Tuesday’s.  Apparently Tuesday is by far the most productive day of the week.  Tuesday’s has always been special for me and my friends becauseit is the day that we get together for dinner each week.  It has become a lovely tradition to meet at our local restaurant and catch up with each others lives.  There are a core of five of us but others join from time to time.  They join for a reason or a season and then they move on.

Tuesday’s is a day that shows up in songs and book and movie titles from time to time.  Ruby Tuesday, If this is Belgium it must be Tuesday, Tuesday’s with Morrie. etc.  Tuesday’s child who is full of grace.  Tuesday is a great day and today is a lovely Tuesday here in Calgary.  It is a warm fall day with lots of sunshine and an optimism in the air about life and winter, which we all know is close.

I have been working to support my local candidate in this election.  I am discouraged, not by the campaign or the usual rhetoric, but by the apparent lack of interest by the voting public.  It is another conversation where one of the parties is not listening.  Candidates are working hard to have their voices heard and they are talking into no one listening.  Voters have either made up their mind at birth and cannot hear the arguments for changing it or they just don’t care.

Here in Alberta, even after 35 years as a resident of this great province, I continue to be amazed at the sheep like voting patterns that change very little from election to election no matter what is going on on the political scene.  There is no accountability for the elected members of parliament in this city and they know it.  They are not even campaigning here because they are assured of a win even without a campaign.

Loyalty is good.  I don’t knock people who remain loyal despite the obvious need for change.  My hope is that they will work to change things from the inside.  Misplaced loyalty or compliance out of apathy bothers me.  People should know who they are electing and for what purpose.  My should wand is clear on this.  Voting should be informed, well informed and if after weighing the choices people choose to reward a non performer with another chance then so be it.  The people have chosen.

It is heartbreaking to know that someone as dedicated and intelligent as my candidate cannot defeat a shadow of a man who doesn’t even show up to campaign, who thumbs his nose at his constituents, who cannot hold a candle to her on so many important fronts.  She is fighting shadows and ghosts, the ghosts of other politicians and their decisions of times past and the shadows of leadership from Ottawa.  She is not allowed to fight the real fight here in the constituency, where, “man to man”, she is the best choice.

I saw a lawn sign the other day.  It said “Just Vote Damn It”.  I agree.  Especially those of us who only earned the right through bloody protests in the 1920’s ought to be sure and vote.  Good luck and thank you for all who choose to run for poliical office.  You have already made a difference. On Tuesday the 15th we will know who was listening and who was not.

I am happy to be in Canmore.  The new slogan, coined by Carol, is “Write more in Canmore”.  I am anticipating a great swell in my activity as a writer. I am aware again of the responsibility that the lable ‘writer’ or ‘author’ carries with it and often times I avoid the lable for fear that peole will think that I can actually write.  It seems arrogant to me to assume that putting words on paper is writing.  There is so much more to it and any one who has done it knows how exacting and unforgiving a process it is.  This week I met two authors at different venues and we shared our stories.  I couldn’t help but feel as if I were an imposter … and yet …. maybe I am becoming a writer.

I am in the Prepare stage.  I am preparing to write.  My purpose is clear… Three smallish books and 8 or 10 articles in the next 12 months.  The subject matter will be PULSE related afer all this is the PULSE Institute where we study People Using Language Skills Effectively.  My list includes applications for PULSE, arguments for the use of PULSE and something more about how the PULSE BEACHs, although informed by the study of the Enneagram, are different from the Enneagram.  Articles that will become chapters on topics like strategic planning and PULSE as a tool for learning English as a Second Language.

My process is to Prepare for the writing by setting up my place in Canmore with everything I need to work undisturbed; to Uncover what is known about each of my topics; to Learn why they are significant to me and to you the reader and to Search possibilities for their application or audience and then to write and write and write as I cycle throught he PULSE Frame over and over as each article and chapter emerges from this internal PULSE conversation.

My protocol will be to remain gentle with myself and others through out the process, to be honest and self critical when I need to be, to be open to the suggestions and thoughts that occur or are shared with my by others, to be specific and use examples for clarity and to keep on talking (writing) until an agreeable, sustainable product has emerged.

I will set up a calendar so that I can have periods of confidential time, where there will only be me and my thoughts. I base my ‘author’ity on this last year of working with PULSE Conversations for Change and seeing how there is so much more to say then I was able to cram into that little volume and on the fact of the postive reviews of that first attempt. My role is to stay focused on the product and the process, learning from last time how and what to do.  Over the next fifteen months my first PULSE priority will be the generation of new products, the promotion of new products and the care and feeding of clients from previous years, practitioners and professionals.

Your role will be to enage with other PULSE professionals to learn the basics and keep you skills honed, to contribute to this endeavor with your thoughts and comments and to stay tuned for the exciting new books and articles that will emerge.  Thanks for your support.

nancy

Marjorie and I are sitting in the office chatting as she edits the PULSE Advanced program which she will present in Kansas next week. Post-it-notes … I forgot to pack them for her.  She will pick some up.  We use post-its for the parking lot items in class.  Participants post their unanswered questions so that we can deal with them after breaks.  It is interesting that few participants take advantage of the opportunity.  That may be because we encourage dialogue in the learning conversation…..

We were also talking about bandaids because Marjorie has mine in her kit for next week.  We print the skills for changing cycles on bandaids, defining a bandaid as something that covers a wound so it can heal from the inside out.  The Bandaid or skill represents the solution that is needed to allow for the healing.  We do an exercise where people decide what skill to apply, and how.  Scenarios are described and bandaids applied.  First Aid for conversations, you might say.  It is a great exercise that provokes a lot of discussion.

“Sometimes it doesn’t fully load” is what Marjorie just said about the footers that for some reason begin on page 39?? in version 2 of the Advanced course.  We spend a lot of time figuring out the program language so that we can have the computer do what we expect.  Computers and people need clear instructions and expectations.  Computers are less forgiving and will not do something you haven’t asked them to do in a way that they understand.  People will pretend to know or think they can figure it out and then get it wrong, not out of bad intention but out of a desire to please and to appear knowledgeable. 

There is this wonderful creative energy that is only resident in people.  People will try to use Bandaids as Post-it-notes and vice versa.  Computers would never think of doing that.  Would you?